Explore research agendas related to the topics we recommend
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Research Agendas
On this page, you can find the research agendas of organisations and researchers from or adjacent to effective altruism. If you want a quick introduction to why these causes are particularly important from an effective altruist perspective, see this TED video or read this article.
Collections covering multiple cause areas
- A central directory for open research questions on the EA forum by Michael Aird
- Collection of example research questions with potentially high social impact by 80,000 Hours
- Humanities Research Ideas for Longtermists by Lizka Vaintrob
- Psychology for Effectively Improving the Future from the EA Psychology Lab
Prioritisation research
- Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University: research agenda
- Research projects suggested by the Forethought Foundation
- Open Philanthropy project: Technical and Philosophical Questions That Might Affect Our Grantmaking
- Legal Priorities Project: A Research Agenda
Human Welfare
Animal Welfare
- The Good Food Institute: 2020 Consumer Research Priorities
- Animal Advocacy Africa:research agenda
- Animal Charity Evaluators: focus areas
- Faunalytics: research agenda
- Sentience Institute: research agenda
- Wild Animal Initiative: research agenda 2020
- Fish Welfare Initiative: Thesis ideas
- Capacity for Welfare & Moral Status by Jason Schukraft of Rethink Priorities
- Wild Animal Initiative: research agenda
Improving Institutional Decision-Making
- EA Geneva: questions related to improving institutional decision making
Global Development
- Innovations for Poverty Action: A Research Agenda for the Next Wave of Graduation Programs
- International Growth Centre’s research priorities (more detailed PDF)
- Esther Duflo’s Research Agenda for Development Economics
Charitable donations decision-making research
The Life You Can Save: research they would like to see more of
Extinction risks + suffering risks:
Technical AI safety
- Center for Human Compatible Artifical Intelligence: annotated bibliography of recommended reading materials
- Machine Intelligence Research Institute: Agent Foundations for Aligning Machine Intelligence with Human Interests (2017) and Alignment for Advanced Machine Learning Systems research agendas
- Center on Long-Term Risk: Cooperation, Conflict, and Transformative Artificial Intelligence: A Research Agenda(+ includes some questions related to AI governance)
- Paul Christiano’s research agenda summary (and FAQ and talk) (2018)
- Stuart Armstrong’s research agenda (2019), example use and talk.
- Vanessa Kosoy’s research agenda (2018)
AI governance
- AI Impacts: promising research projects and possible empirical investigations
- Governance of AI program at Future of Humanity Institute: Alan Dafoe’s AI governance research agenda
- Center for a New American Security: Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative Research Agenda
- Future of Life Institute: A survey of research questions for robust and beneficial AI (+ some aspects also fall into technical AI safety)
- Luke Muehlhauser’s list of research questions to improve our strategic picture of superintelligence (2014)
Other risks
- Alliance for Feeding The Earth in Disasters: research priorities and Effective Thesis research topics
- Center on Long-Term Risk: open research questions (+ includes some questions related to AI governance)
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